Brando was a mesmerizing actor, but acting itself, as he often willingly admitted, is not all it's cracked up to be. Actors interpret, and sometimes in that interpretation there is a certain amount of creativity, but the real creators are the playwrights, screenwriters and novelists. Some of them may deserve the accolade "genius," but actors never do. And Brando certainly doesn't.
Someone said today that without Olivier, Pacino and Brando, Shakespeare would still be a genius. The reverse cannot be said. Actors without great material are empty vessels.
"Terry Teachout says something here that needs to be said about actors and throwing around the word "genius" too cavalierly. I've heard it used several times today regarding Brando"
It is ONLY entertainment industry peers, insiders, lacky minion fanatics, journalists and biographers who over hype actors to genius status. Brando admitted that he put too much (likely all) of himself on film and regretted it. His biographer contradicted himself last on the news by admitting that Brando was a genius but would sit on the street by a phone booth "observing" people hence actors observe, study, THEN mimick human behavior. They "copy". Nothing genius about parroting other people for a role.
Genius are the people who got the space craft to pass through the rings of Saturn this past week after a 7 YEAR JOURNEY! Genius is the doctor who invented the heart replacement pump. Genius are the people who came up with DNA testing. Pretending to be other people is not genius it IS entertainment.
In short, Brando was good in some movies and in the most talented hands of most capable directors such as Kazan and Coppola especially Kazan who directed him in Streetcar and was a seminal part of the Actor's Studio, the drama school that Brando came out of.
But to go overboard on Brando as a "genius" based on a body of work that is very uneven betrays the fatal attraction that Hooywood types have for self destructive anti social and and so called anti establishment types.